WaPo weighs in on Iran election controversy

[khad]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html


The Iranian People Speak
By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009


The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey (http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf) of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past two years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment. And 77 percent of Iranians favored normal relations and trade with the United States, another result consistent with our previous findings.

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

For more on polling in Iran, read Jon Cohen's Behind the Numbers (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2009/06/about_those_iran_polls.html).

[KC]

What's your point?

[AvanteRedGarde]

That so calling leftists like Mike Ely who jump on the bash-Iran bandwagon are not only wrong in there speculation that the vote was rigged but also part of the "left" of imperialist harassment.

Another case of a people being demonized because they didn't vote for the guy who appealed to the West.

[KC]

That so calling leftists like Mike Ely who jump on the bash-Iran bandwagon are not only wrong in there speculation that the vote was rigged but also part of the "left" of imperialist harassment.

Another case of a people being demonized because they didn't vote for the guy who appealed to the West.

God you're a troll.

[Agathon]

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world.

I think that this is the point.

There have been a series of "contested" elections in strategically important parts of the world in recent years. Ukraine is probably the best example. Just as in that case, I see a foreign hand in these protests.

Look at it this way. If Ahmadinejad had won a regular old election, which was quite likely, nothing would have changed and Iran would keep following the course it has done to mostly impotent international opposition.

On the other hand, if you create a ruckus, then if the government is overthrown, then the new government will likely be more amenable to Western (read US, European and Israeli) interests. But if the government survives by a massive crackdown involving the killings of protesters and grotesque human rights violations, then the rest of the world is going to be much less critical if "the mad mullahs who murder their own people" have their nuclear sites bombed to bits by the US or Israel.

I'm tempted to say that a revolt in Iran at this point in time can only serve the interests of foreigners who do not have the best interests of the Iranian people at heart.

[KC]

I'm tempted to say that a revolt in Iran at this point in time can only serve the interests of foreigners who do not have the best interests of the Iranian people at heart.

Then why are you on this forum?

[Agathon]

Then why are you on this forum?

What do you mean? Just because I think that a successful revolt by this mob right now would leave the Iranian people worse off in the long run, does not mean that I like the incumbent regime or think it should stay in power for ever.

[khad]

Raise your hand if you jumped on the color revolution bandwagon for Ukraine.

[Asoka89]

This is NOTHING like the color revolution. This is a soft coup, turned hard coup. Some student just got killed by the quasi-fascist military forces in Tehran.

The vote was absolutely rigged, that Wash Post article is off the mark even on its own points go to juancole.com and look it at dissected.

[Niccolò Rossi]

The vote was absolutely rigged, that Wash Post article is off the mark even on its own points go to juancole.com and look it at dissected.

I don't think whether or not the vote was rigged is the real issue in regards to the events unfolding in Iran at the moment. Not only is speculation on the election's legitimacy sterile, academic and totally disconnected from the struggle on the ground, it fundamentally undermines it by pushing it (back) onto the terrain of the ruling class, rather than seeking the extension and pushing forward of the struggle beyond Mousavi and onto a class terrain.

I found these comments (http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/iran-question-illegitimacy-bigger-electoral-fraud)very interesting. Although the author is a common liberal the gist of what they are saying is important:

"To the extent that the worldwide community gets bogged down in the question of "was there electoral fraud or not?" in Iran it will allow said Ayatollahs to set up the perfect bureaucratic traps to exhaust and defeat the revolt ...

"More to the point: The yearnings by those in the streets of Iran today precede and supercede the concerns about yesterday's election results. They are seizing the moment of the election, but this is not really about the election. This is about a much deeper and wider discontent with the theocratic-political system they have lived under for 30 years...

"Evidence and accusations of electoral fraud, no doubt, ought to be part of the mix here, strategically and tactically, but if it becomes the outcome determinative question then all will likely be lost: the State has the tools it needs to make the waters so muddy as to seem inconclusive. Media and bloggers alike should take care not to reduce the unfolding story to a matter of bean counting and numerology, and should, instead, focus on the larger truths and principles that fuel the protests.

[...]

"In other words, this is a State - and an election - that was and is illegitimate whether or not electoral fraud can be proved in yesterday's vote counting. And the actions it has already taken drive that point home, minute by minute, hour after hour."

I'm tempted to say that a revolt in Iran at this point in time can only serve the interests of foreigners who do not have the best interests of the Iranian people at heart.

The communist analysis of and perspective for the struggle (in contrast to those of bourgeois nationalists) are not a matter of the interests of 'foreigners' v. the 'Iranian people'. The communist perspective is a class perspective.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Why hasn't CNN or BBC covered how poor and working class districts in Tehran are reacting to the election results? We know who won. To just say that their electoral process is too fraudulent to recognize the legitimacy of the decisions of those who voted, is to allow them to dictate the debate on who should be in charge now. And if the 'opposition' are to be in charge, then who knows what consequences this could have on their people. To play into their game, and have the attitude of "who cares, it's an Islamic anti-semite bourgeois regime anyway" is to appropriate the same discourse of first world liberals, and to allow any intervention that they want to carry out.

Genuine anti-imperialists need to defend the Iranian people's decision to choose Ahmadinejad, because more is at stake here than one "lesser evil" being elected over another. It's not as simplistic as ultra-leftists make it out to be.

[Zurdito]

Why hasn't CNN or BBC covered how poor and working class districts in Tehran are reacting to the election results? We know who won. To just say that their electoral process is too fraudulent to recognize the legitimacy of the decisions of those who voted, is to allow them to dictate the debate on who should be in charge now. And if the 'opposition' are to be in charge, then who knows what consequences this could have on their people. To play into their game, and have the attitude of "who cares, it's an Islamic anti-semite bourgeois regime anyway" is to appropriate the same discourse of first world liberals, and to allow any intervention that they want to carry out.

Genuine anti-imperialists need to defend the Iranian people's decision to choose Ahmadinejad, because more is at stake here than one "lesser evil" being elected over another. It's not as simplistic as ultra-leftists make it out to be.

Defending the "decision" of an election in a bourgeois state, of course, is in no way "appropriating the same discourse of first world liberals". :rolleyes:

It always makes me roll my eyes to see the word "liberal" thrown around as an insult regarding issues nothing to do with liberalism. Communists defend the democratic rights of oppressed nations. That doesn't make us "liberals", though it does differentiate us from the reactionaries who take the side of bourgeoisie's which oppose the struggles of their population (even liberals included) for democracy.

Let's quote Lenin (emphasis mine):



We urged the necessity of carrying the class struggle into the rural districts in connection with the fortieth anniversary of the emancipation of the peasantry (issue No. 3[20] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm#fwV05P435F02) and spoke of the irreconcilability of the local government bodies and the autocracy in relation to Witte’s secret Memorandum (No. 4). In connection with the new law we attacked the feudal landlords and the government which serves them (No. 8[21] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm#fwV05P435F03)) and we welcomed the illegal Zemstvo congress. We urged the Zemstvo to pass over from abject petitions (No. 8[22] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm#fwV05P436F01)) to struggle. We encouraged the students, who had begun to understand the need for the political struggle, and to undertake this struggle (No. 3), while, at the same time, we lashed out at the “outrageous incomprehension” revealed by the adherents of the “purely student” movement, who called upon the students to abstain from participating in the street demonstrations (No. 3, in connection with the manifesto issued by the Executive Committee of the Moscow students on February 25). We exposed the “senseless dreams” and the “lying hypocrisy” of the cunning liberals of Rossiya[26] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm#fwV05E173) (No. 5), while pointing to the violent fury with which the government-gaoler persecuted “peaceful writers, aged professors, scientists, and well-known liberal Zemstvo members” (No. 5, “Police Raid on Literature”). We exposed the real significance of the programme of “state protection for the welfare of the workers” and welcomed the “valuable admission” that “it is better, by granting reforms from above, to forestall the demand for such reforms from below than to wait for those demands to be put forward” (No. 6[23] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm#fwV05P436F02)). We encouraged the protesting statisticians (No. 7) and censured the strike-breaking statisticians (No. 9). He who sees in these tactics an obscuring of the class-consciousness of the proletariat and a compromise with liberalism reveals his utter failure to understand the true significance of the programme of the Credo and carries out that programme de facto, however much he may repudiate it. For by such an approach he drags Social-Democracy towards the “economic struggle against the employers and the government” and yields to liberalism, abandons the task of actively intervening in every “liberal” issue and of determining his own, Social-Democratic, attitude towards this question.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm

If you only read one thing today, read section E of that.

[Labor Shall Rule]

I'm using 'liberal' in a non-literal sense. I'm using it to make a logical summation of the ideological attitude of the western media and establishment to the elections: that these miniature demonstrations are reflective of public opinion, that Mousavi was rightfully elected, and that his reactionary "pro-democratic" crowd should be in charge. Mousavi's fight is not a fight for "democracy" anyway - he didn't care about the state's oppression, and he has promised to help push through legislation that could be harmful to women.

[Zurdito]

I'm using 'liberal' in a non-literal sense. I'm using it to make a logical summation of the ideological attitude of the western media and establishment to the elections

Is this supposed to mean something?:confused:

Regarding the rest of your post, I was not arguing to give political support to Mousavi. I believe that the masses have the right to take to the streets against a rigged election and that this is a legitimate demand (this differentiates me from ultra-leftism by definition), regardless of the bourgeois leadership of the struggle. As Lenin said, the point is to intervene into the struggle and to take up a legitimate demand of the masses under a workign class leadership.

[Labor Shall Rule]

It does. Liberals (you know, the nerdy white people that sip $4.50 caramel cappuccinos in cafes and read the New York Times) in political and economic circles, in human rights organizations, in lobbies and 'pro-democracy' advocacy groups, and in the media, are the ones that are focusing on supporting their version of democracy in Iran. They are using liberalism to legitimize direct or indirect intervention in altering the course that it took.

[Zurdito]

It does. Liberals (you know, the nerdy white people that sip $4.50 caramel cappuccinos in cafes and read the New York Times) in political and economic circles, in human rights organizations, in lobbies and 'pro-democracy' advocacy groups, and in the media...

This is a great example of the sectarianism which Lenin was railing against in What Is To be Done, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and others.

[Agathon]

The communist analysis of and perspective for the struggle (in contrast to those of bourgeois nationalists) are not a matter of the interests of 'foreigners' v. the 'Iranian people'. The communist perspective is a class perspective.

Think about who the "foreigners" are, and you'll get my point.

[Nakidana]

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/06/15/ahmadinejad-won-get-over-it/


Ahmadinejad won. Get over it
By: Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
June 15, 2009 12:01 PM EST
Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive elections at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries.

But upsets occur — as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise victory in the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also occur — as in Khatami’s reelection in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005 and, we would argue, this year.

Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious — as in 2005 — to Ahmadinejad’s effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American “Iran experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents — especially his debate with Mousavi.

Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad’s provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi’s desultory one had boosted the incumbent’s standing. Ahmadinejad’s charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons — widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures — seemed to play well with voters.

Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s criticism that Mousavi’s reformist supporters, including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment program and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular support for the program — and had the added advantage of being true.

More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.

American “Iran experts” assumed that “disastrous” economic conditions in Iran would undermine Ahmadinejad’s reelection prospects. But the International Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will actually grow modestly this year (when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are in recession). A significant number of Iranians — including the religiously pious, lower-income groups, civil servants and pensioners — appear to believe that Ahmadinejad’s policies have benefited them.

And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that most Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible. The “Iran experts” further argue that the high turnout on June 12 — 82 percent of the electorate — had to favor Mousavi. But this line of analysis reflects nothing more than assumptions.

Some “Iran experts” argue that Mousavi’s Azeri background and “Azeri accent” mean that he was guaranteed to win Iran’s Azeri-majority provinces; since Ahmadinejad did better than Mousavi in these areas, fraud is the only possible explanation.

But Ahmadinejad himself speaks Azeri quite fluently as a consequence of his eight years serving as a popular and successful official in two Azeri-majority provinces; during the campaign, he artfully quoted Azeri and Turkish poetry — in the original — in messages designed to appeal to Iran’s Azeri community. (And we should not forget that the supreme leader is Azeri.) The notion that Mousavi was somehow assured of victory in Azeri-majority provinces is simply not grounded in reality.


With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by Mousavi — such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not keeping polls open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least three hours after the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, have tipped the outcome so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favor.

Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared with the U.S. presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral process seem less significant.

In the wake of Friday’s election, some “Iran experts” — perhaps feeling burned by their misreading of contemporary political dynamics in the Islamic Republic — argue that we are witnessing a “conservative coup d’état,” aimed at a complete takeover of the Iranian state.

But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, it has been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, after all, who declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed. And three days before the election, Mousavi supporter Rafsanjani published a letter criticizing the leader’s failure to rein in Ahmadinejad’s resort to “such ugly and sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false allegations.” Many Iranians took this letter as an indication that the Mousavi camp was concerned their candidate had fallen behind in the campaign’s closing days.

In light of these developments, many politicians and “Iran experts” argue that the Obama administration cannot now engage the “illegitimate” Ahmadinejad regime. Certainly, the administration should not appear to be trying to “play” in the current controversy in Iran about the election. In this regard, President Barack Obama’s comments on Friday, a few hours before the polls closed in Iran, that “just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities” was extremely maladroit.

From Tehran’s perspective, this observation undercut the credibility of Obama’s acknowledgement, in his Cairo speech earlier this month, of U.S. complicity in overthrowing a democratically elected Iranian government and restoring the shah in 1953.

The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against engaging Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s victory may force Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the deficiencies and internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before the Iranian election, the Obama administration had fallen for the same illusion as many of its predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics is primarily about personalities and finding the right personality to deal with. That is not how Iranian politics works.

The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centers; within that system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of national security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program and relations with the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s election would have continued the nuclear program as Iran’s president; none would agree to its suspension.

Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening with the United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, respectful of Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional importance, accepting of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full range of civil nuclear technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle — and aimed at genuine rapprochement.

Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the interests of the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. It is time for the Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this approach — with an Iranian administration headed by the reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State university. Hillary Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both worked for many years on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including as members of the National Security Council staff.

[Zurdito]

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.


Spot the flaw in this logic for a cookie!

Can someone tell me, if Ahmadinejad is so popular that he gets highers % of the vote than Peron, Chavez (ok the same as chavez in 2006), Morales, Allende etc. at their height (quite a ridiculous thing to believe), then where are the masses in the streets defending him? :confused:

[Labor Shall Rule]

This is a great example of the sectarianism which Lenin was railing against in What Is To be Done, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and others.

I think you know what I meant when I used 'liberal', so please stop nit-picking at my use of the term and focus on what is more relevant. This is the great example of sectarianism: *****ing about insignificant things.


Spot the flaw in this logic for a cookie!

Can someone tell me, if Ahmadinejad is so popular that he gets highers % of the vote than Peron, Chavez (ok the same as chavez in 2006), Morales, Allende etc. at their height (quite a ridiculous thing to believe), then where are the masses in the streets defending him?

http://payvand.com/news/09/jun/Ahmadinejad-supporters-Mossalla-Tehran5.jpg

[Zurdito]

I think you know what I meant when I used 'liberal', so please stop nit-picking at my use of the term and focus on what is more relevant. This is the great example of sectarianism: *****ing about insignificant things.

Yes you're right, just for fun I'm pretending to not know what you mean, because my life is that boring and I have nothing better to do.:rolleyes:

I think you are being sectarian with the Iranian masses in the streets who have illusions in the struggle for basic democratic rights. I think that struggle is progressive and that you diminish it. I hope this is just a misunderstanding on my part, but based on what you write, it does not seem to be.

Now I have to go and do some things, it's 8:25 int he morning where I am and I was up all night doing a translation and procranisting on revleft. I'll be gone for a while so you have some time to set right my "misunderstanding" if you so wish.

bye for now.

[( R )evolution]

I don't think whether or not the vote was rigged is the real issue in regards to the events unfolding in Iran at the moment. Not only is speculation on the election's legitimacy sterile, academic and totally disconnected from the struggle on the ground, it fundamentally undermines it by pushing it (back) onto the terrain of the ruling class, rather than seeking the extension and pushing forward of the struggle beyond Mousavi and onto a class terrain.

I found these comments (http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/iran-question-illegitimacy-bigger-electoral-fraud)very interesting. Although the author is a common liberal the gist of what they are saying is important:
"To the extent that the worldwide community gets bogged down in the question of "was there electoral fraud or not?" in Iran it will allow said Ayatollahs to set up the perfect bureaucratic traps to exhaust and defeat the revolt ...

"More to the point: The yearnings by those in the streets of Iran today precede and supercede the concerns about yesterday's election results. They are seizing the moment of the election, but this is not really about the election. This is about a much deeper and wider discontent with the theocratic-political system they have lived under for 30 years...

"Evidence and accusations of electoral fraud, no doubt, ought to be part of the mix here, strategically and tactically, but if it becomes the outcome determinative question then all will likely be lost: the State has the tools it needs to make the waters so muddy as to seem inconclusive. Media and bloggers alike should take care not to reduce the unfolding story to a matter of bean counting and numerology, and should, instead, focus on the larger truths and principles that fuel the protests.

[...]

"In other words, this is a State - and an election - that was and is illegitimate whether or not electoral fraud can be proved in yesterday's vote counting. And the actions it has already taken drive that point home, minute by minute, hour after hour."


I sadly do not believe these statements are correct. At this point, I just don’t see the root of the struggle as a revolutionary movement. I believe the movement is being target at solely cleaning up the charges of fraud and placing Mousavi in power.

We must remember who are the ones in the streets fighting for Mousavi? ".....were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians."

This isn’t the fighting force that is going to bring about revolutionary change. The majority of people still respect Khamenei and I don’t believe they will participate in a movement against him and the entire system. The demands of those protesting are rather limited in the charges of fraud and Mousavi.

Have you guys seen the state organized protest? They had swelling numbers as well. I believe there is a lot of exaggeration going on and we must get down to the real facts before we can make assumptions about the possibility of a revolution coming out of this.

[KC]

We must remember who are the ones in the streets fighting for Mousavi? ".....were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians."

This is a lie. The WaPo article never said anything about who is in the streets in support of Mousavi, as the WaPo article is referring to a survey it took before the election was held. Many others are in the streets in support of Mousavi and/or against the dictatorship in general, and it includes people across the board, from workers to students to middle class liberals and beyond.



This isn’t the fighting force that is going to bring about revolutionary change. The majority of people still respect Khamenei and I don’t believe they will participate in a movement against him and the entire system. The demands of those protesting are rather limited in the charges of fraud and Mousavi.

Then you have not been following the situation at all.

[Niccolò Rossi]

At this point, I just don’t see the root of the struggle as a revolutionary movement. I believe the movement is being target at solely cleaning up the charges of fraud and placing Mousavi in power.

I neither agree with or have asserted that this movement is at current and at it's roots, a revolutionary one. The movement is at its roots popular and inter-class. It's origin is largely spontaneous, over the past few days we have seen the changing way that Mousavi and the liberal-reformist bourgeois faction that he represents have been manoeuvring to assert control over the moment and reign it in behind them.

I don't think this movement is completely mobilised behind Mousavi and around the issue of election fraud as you say. Yes, this may play the central issue. Yes, this may be what sparked off the movement in it's very beginning, however I think we need to understand the situation is a little more complex than this, especially given it's evolution over the past 5 days.


We must remember who are the ones in the streets fighting for Mousavi? ".....were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians."

This isn’t the fighting force that is going to bring about revolutionary change. I don't think it is at all correct to say that this movement is entirely one of students, high income earners and the Iranian middle classes. Since it's inception, and still at this stage, the movement is very clearly a popular and inter-class one. Where workers are present in this movement they are still acting as atomised individuals, dissolved amongst the mass of 'the people'.

So yes, I would agree, at current this is not the force for revolution. However what you are ignoring is the potential for this movement to develop beyond it's current bounds. If the working class are able to be drawn into the struggle and assert itself as a class this would represent a fundamental and qualitative change of real importance in the movement. What the possibility of this happening is is something we are yet to see and will have to analysed as the movement evolves.


The majority of people still respect Khamenei and I don’t believe they will participate in a movement against him and the entire system.
The demands of those protesting are rather limited in the charges of fraud and Mousavi.I don't think this is completely true. There are signs, in dispersed and embryonic in form, that the movement is trying to progress beyond these demands, beyond the control of Mousavi and come into direct conflict with the Iranian state as a whole.

One thing history shows us very clearly is how quickly the consciousness of the working class can broaden and deepen itself, how the constraints of bourgeois ideology can be cast off in the struggle. Nobody in the workers movement anticipated the 1905 Revolution in Russia and the rise of the workers councils. In 1917, Lenin was immersed in theoretical work, writing State and Revolution, when the February Revolution burst out and interrupted his work.


I believe there is a lot of exaggeration going on and we must get down to the real facts before we can make assumptions about the possibility of a revolution coming out of this.I definitely sympathise with what you are saying here. We should not and can not be starry eyed about the movement and overstate the potential and reality of the situation. What the potential of the movement is and to what degree this can be fulfilled is something we can not say with any certainty at this point. What is needed from communist militants at present is the concrete analysis of the realities of the situation and putting forward revolutionary proletarian perspectives for the struggle of working class.

[Enragé]

people, check this out: http://twitter.com/persiankiwi

stuff like "only baseej militia and Etellaat folowing orders - they cannot contain country without Army - #Iranelection", is promising.

also: http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi

and many others.